Tag Archives: site

Migrating a standalone WordPress site to a site network (or “multisite”) environment is a tedious and tricky endeavor, the opposite is also true. The WordPress Importer works reasonably well for smaller, simpler sites, but leaves room for improvement. It exports content, but not site configuration data such as Widget and Customizer configurations, plugins, and site settings. The Importer also struggles to handle a large amount of content. In this article, you’ll learn how to streamline this type of migration by using MU-Migration, a WP-CLI plugin.

Google Analytics (GA) is capable of generating incredibly detailed and comprehensive data. It provides the insights needed to fine-tune your site, reduce UX friction and ultimately maximize conversions. But there’s a catch. It’s only effective if you actually know how to interpret the data. Unfortunately, not all users fully understand the core metrics, and there’s uncertainty as to how to decipher them. Here, we’ll take a look at six of the most misunderstood metrics in GA to find out what the data means and how to apply it in order to optimize your site. 1. Direct Traffic At first…

As a designer, developer, or marketer, it’s your job to develop something unique for your brand’s website. The reason for this is simple: you want to stand out from the generic chatter surrounding your brand in the market, and a unique style will help you do that. But sometimes being adventurous in design can do more harm than good. Case in point: the navigation. In a web usability report from KoMarketing in 2015, roughly half of their survey’s respondents reported using the navigation menu to acquaint themselves with a new website. On the flip side of that, 37% of respondents…

You believe that a more customized user experience will lead to more orders, demo requests, phone calls etc. So, you have structures in place to deliver appropriate messages to your different audiences, each with distinct needs and expectations.

But I must ask, how are you segmenting your visitors?

You might be grouping them by device, by traffic source, by demographic data.

People often segment general visitors by device, by traffic source, and by demographic data.

But the ultimate goal of segmentation, like conversion optimization, is to increase conversions. With that in mind, this post is all about that one segment you probably aren’t looking at: converters versus non-converters.

To clarify, your converter segment is not necessarily the same thing as your repeat-customer or Loyalty segment. Your converter segment includes anyone who converts, whether or not they’ve converted before.

Rather than focusing on different general visitor segments, you should turn your attention to the behaviors that differentiate visitors who convert from visitors who don’t.

When you focus on general visitor segments, you’re working from the top of the funnel to the bottom. Why not work from the bottom of the funnel, up? After all, that’s where the money is!

Correlation vs. Causation

First things first: when you’re looking at differences between converters and non-converters on your site, you must be wary of correlation versus causation.

It’s almost impossible to know whether converters are behaving in a distinct way because they’re already motivated to buy (correlation) or because the elements on the page have enabled those distinct behaviors (causation).

For example, does a converter browse more products than a non-converter because they’re already motivated to buy before arriving on-site? Or does an on-site UI that emphasizes browsability encourage converters to browse (and therefore convert)?

It’s similar to the search bar quandary: typically, visitors who search convert at a higher rate. But do they convert because they search (causation) or do the search because they’re already more motivated to buy (correlation)?

It’s a bit of a “the chicken or the egg” situation.

Fortunately, at WiderFunnel, we’re able to test on many retailers’ websites and take note of certain patterns. On multiple instances with different clients, we have observed clear and drastic differences in key user behavior metrics between visitors who convert and visitors who don’t convert.

These differences paint a picture of how your visitors shop. You can use this information to improve your UX and add features that’ll help your general visitors behave more like converters than non-converters. The hope is that encouraging non-converters to mimic the behavior of converters will lead to them actually becoming converters.

Moral of the story: If you observe impactful differences between converters and non-converters on your site, you should create a hypothesis that targets these differences.

WiderFunnel Optimization Strategist, Nick So, recently ran a test that did just that.

Let’s buy some shoes

One of our biggest clients is a global shoe retailer. Over the past 6 months, Nick noticed some patterns in their analytics:

A high percentage of visitors that convert (like 60%) are returning visitors

Converters visited 186% more pages per session on average and spent more time on page per session than non-converters

Converter vs. Non-Converter behavior on this client’s site.

Meaning, the majority of converters on this site have already been to the site at least once before and they seem to spend much more time browsing than their non-converting counterparts.

It’s common sense that visitors who convert behave differently than those who don’t. But it wasn’t until we pulled the report and saw how big the difference was in their shopping behavior that we really thought to go down this path.

In previous testing, Nick had also observed that visitors to this site are responsive to features that increase the browsability of multiple products. He’d noticed the same sensitivity with some of our other retailer clients, where features that made it easier to compare products helped conversions.

We decided to run with this data. Our hypothesis was based on the idea that visitors who convert are most likely returning visitors, therefore, pointing them toward products they’ve already viewed will guide them back into the funnel.

The hypothesis: Increasing the browsability of the site by displaying recently viewed products to increase relevance for the visitor will encourage higher engagement and increased return visits, which will increase conversions.

Nick and the team tested a single variation against the Control homepage. The Control featured a “Recommended Products” section just below the hero section, displaying four of the client’s most popular product categories.

In our variation, we replaced this with a “Your Recently Viewed Products” section. We wanted to target those visitors who were returning to the site, presumably to continue in the purchasing process. The products displayed in this section were unique to each returning visitor.

Our variation won, consistently outperforming the Control during this test. This client saw a 6.9% increase in order completions.

Bottom to top

When you’re segmenting your audience, don’t forget about the segment that floats at the bottom of the funnel. Instead of identifying the differences that characterize visitors coming to your site, why not work backwards?

Look at the behavioral differences that distinguish converters from non-converters and test ways to help non-converters mimic the behaviors of converters.

Have you noticed drastic behavioral differences between your visitors who convert and those who don’t convert? Do you tap into this particular segment when you plan tests? Tell us all about it in the comments!

Desperate times call for desperate measures. In attempts to fight back against the growing adoption of ad-blockers, many publishers and ad-dependent websites adopt all kinds of techniques from introducing “light” paywalls to limiting access to the site to fully blocking ad-blocker users from accessing the content altogether.
It seems a bit ironic that a website would send away potential customers that are taking measures to actually access the site faster, and read the content published on the site without annoying distractions.

Good navigation is the main cornerstone of an effective website. In practice, however, it’s often a tough challenge to come up with a meaningful, unambiguous way to organize, arrange, and display content to users; and it’s often not much easier to find a visually interesting solution either. The wide adaption of JavaScript libraries like jQuery is making it increasingly easy to add various kinds of sleek animations to navigation design.

“Form follows function” is a widely accepted — albeit controversial — principle that most designers in a variety of disciplines have adopted since its inception at the turn of the 20th century. On the web, we commonly refer to function as usability which is the ease of use and navigation of a website in order to achieve user’s goals.
In this showcase we present websites that sacrifice usability for beauty and present issues related to clutter, loading, navigation, archiving or visibility.

Websites are designed to be used by people of varying backgrounds, educations and technical levels. One of the challenges we face when designing for the Web is finding a way to create sites and applications that can be accessed by a widely disparate audience while avoiding the pitfall of sacrificing the quality of our work to cater to the dreaded ‘lowest common denominator.’
Further Reading on SmashingMag: What You Need To Know About Anticipatory Design Improving Customer Service with UX How To Successfully Educate Your Clients On Web Development Users are Not Idiots Even though it happens to me with some frequency, being told by a client that one of the requirements for their project is that it must be ‘idiot proof’ never fails to give me pause.

Websites are designed to be used by people of varying backgrounds, educations and technical levels. One of the challenges we face when designing for the Web is finding a way to create sites and applications that can be accessed by a widely disparate audience while avoiding the pitfall of sacrificing the quality of our work to cater to the dreaded ‘lowest common denominator.’
Further Reading on SmashingMag: What You Need To Know About Anticipatory Design Improving Customer Service with UX Improving Customer Service with UX – Idiots & Drama Queens How To Successfully Educate Your Clients On Web Development Giving Users Some Credit Even though it happens to me with some frequency, being told by a client that one of the requirements for their project is that it must be ‘idiot proof’ never fails to give me pause.

Hacker attacks across the web are getting more sophisticated every day – after all, they have to. With the increased sophistication of anti-virus protection, firewalls, and application-based updates, hackers who want to stay in business have needed to get more creative. And they have, responding with increasingly sophisticated attacks that have forced the online security industry to scramble to keep up.
So how do the hackers stay ahead of the security experts?